It has long been recognized that tools useful for preparing and consuming foodstuffs require a certain degree of cleanliness and/or sterility to limit or prevent disease conditions in humans. Accordingly, it is generally accepted that some effective cleaning process for cooking and eating utensils is virtually required to ensure and maintain a minimal level of sterility or cleanliness. In the industrial era, it has been well recognized that various cleaning agents (detergents and builders) and heated water, or other specialized cleaning solutions, are useful in achieving adequately clean cooking tools and dining utensils. Until the modern industrial era, kitchen and eating utensils were cleaned by generally slow, manual, operations. But, economic advancements, and societal preference changes, have caused demand changes for people to own effective dining and food preparation appliances, cleaning tools and the like. In particular, there has been increased desire to make the process of cleaning kitchen utensils more efficient. To satisfy this desire, numerous manufacturers have developed what has become an extremely common appliance to effectively clean kitchen utensils known as “automatic dishwasher”. This appliance has significantly improved productivity by primarily eliminating manual washing tasks. But, this appliance still requires moving dishes, etc. from a dining location, arranging them in the washer (a sometimes daunting, time-consuming task) and subsequently moving the cleaned items to a relatively secure storage area to ensure continued cleanliness. Additionally, to prepare for dining, the dishes and other utensils must be moved from storage and arranged on the table. Simple time-motion studies regarding such cleaning steps underscores the realization that considerable time is thus taken cleaning a dining table, stacking dishes, arranging them in the dishwasher and often having to repeat the process for a given dining experience when there are more dishes and utensils than washer space. Accordingly, it would be useful to have processes and appliances that advance this art, including: improving time and efficiency in washing, drying, utensil storage and the like.
Secondarily to the general problem of effectively and efficiently providing clean, sterile dishes, cookware and utensils for individuals, is the time required to move, load and unload dishes to a large dishwasher and subsequently setup a dining table in high throughput dining operations where the atmosphere of dining is less of a priority. For example, cleaning and setup-steps are even more costly for businesses such as industrial cafeterias, schools, shift-work oriented businesses, the military, and the like. Decreases in the food consumption-utensil cleaning-setup cycles are extremely desirable is such environments and labor costs via time-savings are generally very desirable. Also desirable is reducing space consumption and overall improved ergonomic operation of various floor-space constrained kitchen-dining environments such as small apartments and homes, marine vehicles (e.g. sail and power water craft), meeting rooms, and the like. Additionally, many individuals in this day and time are much less concerned with owning multiple sets of dining utensils and far more concerned with being able to quickly eat and clean their used dishes.
Further, it is presently desirable in age of wide geographic coverage of computer and cellular phone networks (e.g. “WiFi”) to control and access home appliances, such as a dishwasher, by remote control through wireless internet connections, cellular telephones and the like.
A number of past descriptions appear in the art of dining/dishwashing appliances. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,750,611 describes an “Automatic Meal Table”: essentially this description is directed to an table+dishwasher appliance whereby a dining place setting is securely placed onto a movable endless belt which moves the dishes to be washed through a series of washing, rinsing, and drying step. Accompanied with this appliance are a complicated series of mechanical means to facilitate the cleaning, rinsing, and drying processes.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,971,519 describes a combined dining table and dishwasher, the principal object of which is to provide, in a single structure, a dining surface, and several compartments underneath to wash and store dishes, etc., below a table top, thereby eliminating the usual five or more operations of cleaning the table, washing the dishes and flatware, drying and storing them and setting the table for the next meal. As with U.S. Pat. No. 2,750,611, the U.S. Pat. No. 2,971,519 description includes extensive, complicated mechanical mechanisms for accomplishing the goals of the invention. But, this invention also fails to eliminate the process of setting a table subsequent to washing and also places dishes, glasses, flatware and the like in an awkward position underneath the top of a table where they may be susceptible to breakage on removal.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,952,568 to Schapp et al. proposes an early, simple method to provide clean eating utensils by integrating plates, bowels, drinking glasses and flatware into a single modular tray which can then be manually cleaned by reversing the tray onto a tabletop that incorporates washing means such as a modified sink.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,378,537 B1 to DeHart describes an integral dining table and dishwasher unit where a hinged access cover is supplied to access the dishwasher and a tray that moves upwardly and downwardly is supplied for automatic flush mounting at the table level: a perforated chute extending from below the dining surface into the dishwasher is used for placing and retrieving dishes and storing dishes during washing. A separate compartment, in another section of the table, is taught available for washing pots and other large utensils. Despite some of the aforementioned advances in the art directed to preparing eating utensils for cleaning and use, there are still opportunities for further labor reductions, time saving, compact appliances. Accordingly, it would be useful to provide new solutions to the art.